The ground was parcelled off in such bits as to make me smile when I remembered our own wide tracts in the New World.  Here waste was sin:  with us part and parcel of a creed.  I marvelled, too, at the primness and solidity of the houses along the road, and remarked how their lines belonged rather to the landscape than to themselves.  But I was conscious ever of a strange wish to expand, for I felt as tho’ I were in the land of the Liliputians, and the thought of a gallop of forty miles or so over these honeycombed fields brought me to a laugh.  But I was yet to see some estates of the gentry.

I had it on my tongue’s tip to ask the captain whither he was taking me, yet dared not intrude on the sorrow that still gripped him.  Time and time we met people plodding along, some of them nodding uncertainly, others abruptly taking the far side of the pike, and every encounter drove the poison deeper into his soul.  But after we had travelled some way, up hill and down dale, he vouchsafed the intelligence that we were making for Arbigland, Mr. Craik’s seat near Dumfries, which lies on the Nith twenty miles or so up the Solway from Kirkcudbright.  On that estate stood the cottage where John Paul was born, and where his mother and sisters still dwelt.

“I’ll juist be saying guidbye, Richard,” he said; “and leave them a bit siller I hae saved, an’ syne we’ll be aff to London thegither, for Scotland’s no but a cauld kintra.”

“You are going to London with me?” I cried.

“Ay,” answered he; “this is hame nae mair for John Paul.”

I made bold to ask how the John’s owners had treated him.

“I have naught to complain of, laddie,” he answered; “both Mr. Beck and Mr. Currie bore the matter of the admiralty court and the delay like the gentlemen they are.  They well know that I am hard driven when I resort to the lash.  They were both sore at losing me, and says Mr. Beck:  I We’ll not soon get another to keep the brigantine like a man-o’-war, as did you, John Paul.’  I thanked him, and told him I had sworn never to take another merchantman out of the Solway.  And I will keep that oath.”

He sighed, and added that he never hoped for better owners.  In token of which he drew a certificate of service from his pocket, signed by Messrs. Currie and Beck, proclaiming him the best master and supercargo they had ever had in their service.  I perceived that talk lightened him, and led him on.  I inquired how he had got the ‘John’.

“I took passage on her from Kingston, laddie.  On the trip both Captain Macadam and the chief mate died of the fever.  And it was I, the passenger, who sailed her into Kirkcudbright, tho’ I had never been more than a chief mate before.  That is scarce three years gone, when I was just turned one and twenty.  And old Mr. Currie, who had known my father, was so pleased that he gave me the ship.  I had been chief mate of the ‘Two Friends’, a slaver out of Kingston.”